


Ficlets and prompt responses

by dancinguniverse



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 10:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 10,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16852081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/pseuds/dancinguniverse
Summary: All previously posted on Tumblr and only now getting imported to Ao3.





	1. Surfing

“That’s impossible,” Dick says in awe, as the tiny figures down on the beach stand on their boards, riding the foaming curl of the waves in all apparent defiance of gravity. He doesn’t look away, clearly enthralled, and Nix knows he’s going to regret this, but he finds himself opening his mouth anyway.

“They offer lessons.”

It’s only the time change that makes Nix remotely able to follow through with their plans the next morning, and even so, he’s close to huddling in the sand with a cup of coffee and letting Dick handle the lesson on his own. Dick’s the one who enjoyed the jump itself, the rush of wind and adrenaline, and Dick’s the one who swims like a fish. He’s also far less likely, of the two of them, to break his neck attempting some athletic feat.

But the time change means Nix  _is_  awake, much to his dismay. When the concierge had asked, yesterday, how many for the lesson, Nix had hesitated. But Dick had jostled his arm and told him to live a little, and Nix couldn’t argue when he’d said essentially the same thing to get Dick to come to Hawaii to begin with.

Now, he frowns at the board laying on the sand and resigns himself to following through. He doesn’t have much in the way of ambition, but stubbornness he has in droves. He got through Basic, and he’s sure he can conquer this.

By the afternoon, Nix’s resignation has morphed into realizing that he’s unlikely to catch a wave in this lifetime. Dick hasn’t come close yet either, but he’s still miles more accomplished than Nix. Their instructor, the opposite of the drill sergeant both of them were vaguely expecting, seems equable in the face of their failure, and assures them both that they’ll figure it out. Nix isn’t sure, from watching his easy grace in the water, if his confidence in them is misplaced, or if he’s working off of an expertise Nix can’t begin to guess at.

Either way, Nix is surprisingly content to paddle after Dick through the warm water. When the sun starts to beat down too intensely, Nix tries the pop-up maneuver he’d barely conquered on dry land, and inevitably topples into the water, cooling himself off in the process.

Dick attempts the whole process with a more serious air, but his focused dedication simply means he tries—and falls—more often than Nix. But he, too, seems unfazed by this, and over dinner that evening, he can’t stop recounting his closest attempts, all the ways in which he could improve his efforts the next day.

On the second day, Nix paddles out with them in the morning, then takes a break that lasts most of the afternoon. He observes the proceedings from the hotel’s beachside bar instead, alternating between a novel and the sight of Dick bobbing out in the surf. He drags himself back into the water for congratulations after Dick successfully stands up, though they both agree he can’t really claim to have surfed anything yet.

Their instructor leaves them to rock gently on their boards beyond the breakers, catching a few waves himself with an effortlessness that completely belies the struggles Nix and Dick have both made over the past two days. From the contented smile on Dick’s face, Nix knows neither of them are bothered by it.

“You should pick something tomorrow,” Dick tells him, sitting on his board with all the comfort of it being an easy chair. Nix tries and fails to think of something he’d like better than this, and shrugs.

“I’d like to see you ride one of those big ones,” he says, and Dick kicks him gently through the water.

“Pick something realistic,” he suggests.

But Nix, with the perfect water lapping around his thighs and Dick smiling by his side, thinks that just about anything might be possible.


	2. Muggy

The dishes are dried and put away, and the frogs are starting to sing down by the creek. It’s not full dark yet, and the heat hasn’t dissipated. The air is still heavy, and Nix’s shirt is clinging damply to his back. The porch is swarming with mosquitos tonight, and the air inside the house is too still, every piece of furniture pressing claustrophobically against his skin.

He finds Dick fiddling with the radio, scrolling the stations too quickly to find anything, and looking as disgruntled as Nix feels. Nix holds up the car keys. “I was thinking about taking a drive.”

Dick stands, less eager than relieved. “I’ll come.”

Nix puts the top down on the car, turning carefully out of the little lane until he hits the main road. He turns left away from town, passing the library and heading out toward where the real farms start. The road twines between the properties’ neatly tended squares of corn and open grazing pastures. Trees line the narrow, untended strips of land between the working fields, deepening the twilight of the still-fading sky.

Nix presses down on the gas, kicking up a breeze that finally brings some cool to the night. He glances over, and Dick has an arm draped over the side of the car door, head tipped back in appreciation of the wind ruffling his short-cropped hair, eyes closed.

Nix is never entirely sure what to do with the rough surge of pride he gets in seeing Dick happy by Nix’s design. He just knows he’s greedy for it, and Nix is epicurean by any measure. He stretches an arm across the seat, fingers not quite brushing Dick’s collar, and relaxes into the evening air.

He drives past the county line, true dark falling around them, and then cuts south until he finds the road to wind them home. On both sides of the car, fireflies rise up out of the grass. They’re thick tonight, a near constant glimmer off the roads. Nix slows the car, needing the breeze less now that the sun’s warmth is finally fading, and wanting to stretch the drive a little longer.

He downshifts and drops his hand to the seat, fingers brushing the side of Dick’s palm. Dick opens his eyes, looking across the seat, and runs a thumb over Nix’s knuckles until he has to change gears again.

He spies a dirt path leading off in the middle of the grass lane between two neatly partitioned crop fields, and pulls off on a whim. He noses the car gently off the road, rolling a few car lengths into the field before cutting the engine.

Dick looks over, and Nix shrugs, looking back. “You got to sightsee all you wanted. I was driving.”

Dick’s gaze is warm, and he doesn’t look in the least surprised when Nix slides across the seat. “So, you’re sightseeing now,” he says, raising eyebrows at the dark surrounding them. But he doesn’t argue when Nix kisses him instead of answering, opening his mouth eagerly under Nix’s, and threading a hand into his hair to pull him close. The blinking profusion of fairy lights around them only increases as the sky shades from navy to black, and it’s a long time before Nix pulls the car back onto the road and toward home.


	3. Dancing

But imagine Dick and Lew watching USO shows together, squeezed up against each other in a packed room.

You think Luz was bad during the movie. Nix doesn’t yell out his observations, but he can’t keep them to himself either. He saves it for Dick’s ears only, arm around Dick’s shoulders, leaning in to murmur his own running commentary. Dick won’t shush him, because Nix isn’t bothering anyone else, and he’s really not bothering Dick, if he’s pressed to admit it. Nix judges his success by the amused twitch he can see in Dick’s lips or, if he’s found an especially pointed avenue of opinion, by Dick raising a hand to cover his smile, pretending he’s simply resting his chin in his hand. Once – and only once – Nix gets him to laugh out loud, a single crack of laughter he quickly muffles while the troupe onstage continue their (not currently comedic) routine. But his shoulders shake under Nix’s arm with his sustained, if now silent, amusement, his face reddened under the strain. Nix carries that memory through long days during the war and after.

Another night they bring in a full band, but the men outnumber the few girls they’d managed to scrape together ten to one. The girls are quickly snatched up, and the men crowding the room’s edges are cranky and sore over it. It’s Luz who provides the obvious example, dragging soldiers out on the dance floor two-by-two like a crazed matchmaker and setting them to spinning. He’s grabbing anyone his hand can reach until Bull shifts back, out of range.

Luz waves a hand at him. “You’re too big anyway. Ain’t got no ladies or gents want to take the risk of you stepping on them with your clodhoppers. Sir.”

Bull smiles at him. “That’s fine by me.”

Most of the others put up with good humor, and after a while, the dance floor has more couples than not, however odd some of them might be. The mood turns festive again. 

But Luz shies away every time he veers too close to the cluster of officers bunched on one side of the room. This time it’s Dick who leans in close, putting his mouth near Nix’s ear to make the observation. 

“Well, sure,” Nix drawls back, putting a hand on Dick’s neck to pull him closer. He could probably just yell louder, but neither of them mind. “Luz didn’t have my blue blooded upbringing. Missed all the finer points of etiquette, like who leads and follows when one man’s an officer. Poor guy’s probably embarrassed.” 

“Is that so?” Dick asks. 

“C’mon. Show ‘em how it’s done.” Nix maneuvers in front of Dick, holding his hand out like he would back home, already swaying to the music. 

“Nix,” Dick says quietly, though he refuses to look around to see who might be watching. 

“Come on,” Nix repeats. “You’d let your men get up to something you won’t? What kind of leadership is that?”

“They get up to a lot I don’t,” Dick points out. But it’s nearly impossible to look at Nix’s hand outstretched in front of him and not reach for it, and Nix sees him sway and makes the decision for both of them, grasping both of Dick’s hands and whirling him out. Dick rolls his eyes and moves his feet to the rhythm, and Nix grins. 

“Look, I’ll even let you lead,” he points out, and Dick glances down, and then back up when he nearly stumbles. 

“That’s the proper etiquette?” Dick asks, recovering smoothly. 

“Rank hath its privileges.” 

Dick smiles. “Also I’m taller than you.” 

“Look, you don’t make this interesting, somebody’s gonna cut in on us. I asked you to dance, and you’re just all moon faced over there with your basic –” Dick swings him out in a whirl, and Nix shuts up quickly. 

Nix isn’t quite as adept as he’d hoped at following – he keeps striking out with the wrong foot after turns and spins – but Dick keeps him too busy to complain after that. 


	4. Headaches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> User prompt: I feel like Dick is the kind of guy who gets headaches a LOT. And Nix tries too hard to help him sometimes.

Dick would rather pop an aspirin and work through it, or at worst go take a nap, but only if he’s at home anyway. It’s a headache, he’s fine, they’ve both certainly been through worse. 

Telling Dick to leave off work doesn’t get them anywhere, though it takes Nix a while to accept this. If anything, it puts Dick’s back up against the wall and makes him that much more likely to dig himself into the job. Nix isn’t above simply taking Dick’s paperwork and walking away with it like some kind of classroom bully, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem. 

If he has to, he’ll wait until the end of the day and collect Dick on his way home then. Dick won’t fight him for the keys if he pockets them smoothly enough. And if Nix, who knows at least one type of headache pretty well, presses his sunglasses into Dick’s hand just as they pass outside and the five o’clock sun stabs him in the eyes, he’ll usually slip them on without arguing. 

(Nix is not, however, allowed to open Dick’s door for him, or the whole plot goes out the window in a cranky fit of temper that leaves them both glaring at the windshield the whole ride home.)

What Nix can do is wave Dick into the living room after dinner with another dose of aspirin and take on the dishes by himself. When he finishes, if the radio’s agreeably soft or if Nix is especially persuasive, he can sometimes convince Dick to stretch out on the couch and put his head down on Nix’s thigh. Nix puts his fingers in Dick’s hair and rubs at the ache until the line between Dick’s eyebrows eases, and he sleeps. 


	5. Cowboy AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> User prompt: Omg what if Wild West BoB AU with cowboy winnix 😍😍

  * Once there was a whole Nixon empire, but a decade of rash business decisions and gambling debts, not to mention an inopportune fire, laid waste to all the other ventures. By the time Nix was 22, his mother was long gone and his father had one thing left to offer him before descending into the bottle for good: A thousand acres out west and as many cattle. Faced with destitution in New York or a ranch life out West, Nix would have chosen poverty. But Blanche packed bags for the both of them and hopped on a train, and, well, here he is.
  * It gets a little better the day a certain redhead shows up, his own sister in tow, looking for work. He promises that Ann, still in her teens, can run the books, and he has ranch hand experience. Nix doesn’t know what experience is good, but he and Blanche are heading into fall and hundreds of cattle that need herding, and besides, he likes the way Dick’s eyes crinkle when he smiles. 
  * Before long, Dick is managing all the day to day functions, the other ranch hands, and most of the buying and selling of livestock. Nixon Farms stops struggling to survive, and starts thriving. 
  * Nix never does develop any interest in the operation, but he’ll ride out checking fences with Dick anytime. It takes days, and that means evenings sitting around the fire after dinner, Nix pulling on his flask and Dick staring up at the stars, and nights crowded together in the little pup tent, no one around to notice quite how close. 
  * The first few years, Dick also heads the cattle drives, but Nix starts pitching fits about him being gone for three months out of the year, and they’ve got the money to hire more help. They try a few different bosses, and the whole operation nearly goes under the year Dike loses half the herd and even a few horses fording a river he has no business dealing with. 
  * Dick takes off the minute he gets the telegram, rides three horses almost to foundering trying to catch up with the outfit. He finds the men held together by spit, baling wire, and Carwood Lipton, and a stranger at their head, his meager herd mixed in with the Nixon brand. Under the man’s direction, the group had nearly made up the time lost to the river and Dike’s wandering, and after watching him negotiate the Chicago stockyard with a steel trap of a mind, Dick hires him on. 
  * On the ride back, Dick ducks into the chuck wagon, because maybe Eugene Roe got paid as the cook, but the Doc always kept an eye out. “What do you think?” he asks. Doc shrugs and hands Dick a cup of coffee, like he’d been expecting him. 
  * “Lipton likes him,” Doc says, and Dick had nodded. It was good enough for him, and it would be good enough for the men. 
  * The men do respect Spiers, but they’re a little nervous around him, too. Rumor has it that back when Spiers was working for one of the big operations – though no one can seem to agree just when or where – he caught one of his own men making off with ten head in the middle of a drive. He shot him dead, not even a warning. 
  * On the other hand, every year following his hiring they get the whole herd to the stockyard without any losses, which means bonuses all around. They’ll live with the rumors.
  * Ten years on, Nixon Farms is the most successful in the state. Nix offers to send Blanche back home. She marries a local instead, a rival cattle man. “All the dust and manure got to her brain,” Nix complains, and Dick quirks an eyebrow at him. 
  * “Because she picked the guy who wouldn’t sell you his plot with the spring on it last year?”
  * “No, that part was just to spite me,” Nix assures him. They’re curled together in the big four-poster Nix’s room, cicadas singing through the open windows. No need for furtive fence rides with Blanche and Ann married off, and the men have their own rooms in the barracks next door. “But another ranch? She could have gone back to the city.”
  * Dick’s fingers stop their absent tracing through Nix’s hair. “Would you?” 
  * Nix is silent for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. “I’ve got… obligations here,” he says finally, and risks a look over at Dick. “Unless you think you might be taking off for greener pastures, too.” His mouth twitches. “Could just sell off the whole thing.”
  * Dick settles his hand on Nix’s cheek, tilts his face up for a kiss. “I think we’ve got a good thing going. Let’s see where next season takes us.” 




	6. Under the stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: things you said under the stars and in the grass.

Easy pauses to catch its collective breath in the middle of yet another French field. For the last hour, it’s been nothing but rustling grasses that reach up to scratch at their hands and cicadas that drone loud enough to drown out the tromp of army boots. The men drop into the grass where they stand when Dick passes the word down the line, soldiers reaching for their canteens and tearing open food packs.

They’re eight miles from Carentan, if Dick’s estimates are anything like accurate. How many drills in the dark? How many marches through the woods in Georgia, in England? But this is Normandy, and the drills are over. If they don’t make their rendezvous tomorrow morning then it won’t be Sobel’s wrath they’ll contend with, but German artillery’s. He reaches for his map again, and Nix bats his hand away.  He’s been at Dick’s side the whole march, and with acres of barley to choose from, he settled close enough that when he moves their jackets brush, one more rustle in the whispering night.

“It hasn’t changed since the last time you checked it, and we haven’t moved except to sit down.”

Nix’s voice is soft. There’s no telling who else is traipsing around in the ruined farmland with them. But his tone is as lazy as if they’re back at Toccoa, and thinks Dick has polished his boots one too many times. He reaches for his flask before he unscrews the cap on his canteen. 

Dick compromises by checking his weapons again. He’s beyond tired, feet aching from the march, arms and shoulders rubbery from the weight he carries, chest still sore from the hard snap of the chute from the first jump, harder than any practice—but Sobel had at least ensured this is a state as familiar as home, barely worth noticing. Even Sobel, though, couldn’t have prepared them for the shock of bodies piled in fields, men with faces and limbs blown away. Dick pulls out his grenades, checks the tape over the triggers. He runs his fingers over them in the dark, counting, comforting himself with their weight in his hand, the ordered set of them. He understands, suddenly, the value of a rosary.  

Beside him, Nix’s canteen rattles as he screws the lid back into place. “Sky’s clearing,” he murmurs, and, when Dick doesn’t react, nudges Dick’s shoulder.

Dick looks up, distracted. There’s still a haze high in the sky, the effect of so much artillery for so many days, but the thicker clouds have moved off. “Glad not to have the rain.” He eyes the moon dubiously, its face half-lit, already sinking toward the horizon amid a sprawl of stars. It’s late, but they should get a few more hours before it sets entirely.

Nix voices the extension of the thought for him. “Maybe with some light, Fox’ll walk a straight line. You think they’re trying to hike back home or something?”

Dick replaces his grenades carefully, and lifts his helmet to rub a hand over his face. He can’t think of a response witty enough to match Nix’s invitation toward levity, and he won’t grouse about another company while they’re behind enemy lines together. He doesn’t say anything.

Around them, the other man are huddled in clusters, murmuring in hushed tones. They’ve made it past the active fires, the wrecks of planes, though they still cross signs of the battle from time to time. Here, where the ground hasn’t yet been ripped up, the fairy blinking of fireflies flickers in the tall grass around them and Dick twitches away a shudder before it can roll through him. It’s too much like home, and yet to the east, the fires from the first assault are still lighting up the horizon.

Nix nudges his shoulder again, this time holding out half a chocolate bar, and Dick takes it without comment. Dick thinks Nix should eat his rations, and Nix swears he can scrounge more than whiskey to avoid eating tinned food for the duration of their European stint. Dick isn’t keeping track, but he’s long past arguing the point.

“You get a lot of stars back in Lancaster?” Nix asks around a mouthful of chocolate. It seems his abstention from army provisions is at best incomplete.

“Sure,” Dick answers. The chocolate makes his mouth water, his tongue almost buzzing with it, and he realizes that even if his stomach doesn’t know he’s hungry, his body does. He pulls out his own meal kit.

“And did a young Dick Winters have a favorite stargazing spot?”

Dick shrugs, picking at a tin of beans. He can feel Nix’s gaze on him, but he has actually figured this out over the past few days, and luckily for his pride, he pries the lid off a moment later without slicing his finger or dumping the food in his lap. “Anywhere’s fine. Not a lot of lights around my house. Just head out in the back yard, mostly. There’s a porch out there, a bench.” He waves a hand. “Almost as many lightning bugs.”

Nix’s voice grows wistful. “Not a lot of stargazing in Chicago.”

“No?” Even a few bites has eased Dick’s muscles and nerves a bit, enough to let him remember the easy back and forth he usually has with Nix.

“Tell me more about this farm idea of yours,” Nix commands.

Dick carefully doesn’t look around at the barley waving above their heads, the once carefully plowed fields, starting to grow disordered from a season of poor tending. “Just think some peace and quiet might make for a nice change of pace.”

“Yeah? You might have something there.” He takes the crackers Dick hands him, payback for the earlier chocolate, and nibbles on one thoughtfully. “What’s a fellow have to do to see such a place for himself? New York, New Jersey—my parts of them, anyway—aren’t so great with the night skies.”

There’s a firefly on Nix’s left knee, the one pressing against Dick’s thigh. His hands are full, but he’s sorely tempted to hold out a finger, like he used to as a kid, and wait to see if it considered him a worthy perch. “I don’t know.” He wipes his mouth. “Your schedule sounds pretty busy after. Chicago, I think I’ve heard Los Angeles, something about South America…”

“That’s  _our_  schedule, my friend. What, you think you’re getting out of it because of your European tour?”

Dick should pull out his watch. He wanted to give the men twenty minutes, and surely they’re coming to the end of that, should be packing up and marching on. But he stays his hand for another minute. Not quite yet. Let them have fireflies and insect song for just a minute more.

“Alright.” And Dick sees the trap that’s been laid for him, steps neatly into it anyway and makes it a formal proposal. “Lew, do you want to see Lancaster after?” After  _what_ , they do not usually specify. To name something would be to give it power, to re-insert reality into their post-war fantasy.

“I think I would,” Nix says promptly.

“Okay.” And now Dick does pull out his watch, puts away his food kit and checks his rifle one last time. “I’ll take you there.”


	7. sickfic

Nix tugs at his laces, the knots muddy and stubborn, until he can pull his boots off. His shirt he drops in a crumpled pile on his bed — someone’s bed, anyway. His for the duration that the 2nd battalion decides to grace the town with its presence. Across the room, Dick muffles another cough into his bedsheets. Nix can hear the shiver in his breath, and he’s curled into a miserable ball in his own borrowed bed, his back to the room. Nix sighs and crosses the room, settling down on the edge of the ancient wooden frame and lifting the covers. “Scoot over,” he murmurs, tucking himself in along with Dick.

Dick edges over, obliging him the space automatically, but he cranes his head back. “What are you doing?”

“I can hear your teeth chattering across the room,” Nix tells him. “Not like it’s the first time we’ve huddled for warmth.”

“That was different,” Dick says, instantly argumentative, and hunches away when Nix curls his knees behind Dick’s. “Nix.” His voice is always soft, a little husky when they carry on at night, but it scrapes out rougher than normal. “This is stupid. Anyone could walk in, you’re going to get sick yourself —”

Nix rubs his hand over Dick’s arm, then slings an arm around his belly. “Everyone in the camp is sick with something, and I’ve escaped it so far. And no one ever comes in. They could have walked by our foxhole too, but they didn’t.”

“That was stupid too,” Dick rasps. Nix closes his eyes, sighing onto the back of Dick’s neck, and thinks about crossing the room again back to his own bed. Dick shivers and falls silent. Nix wonders if this is why they haven’t talked about what happened in the woods, if this explains Dick’s occasional wariness with him since. But it’s late and he’s tired, and they can continue not talking talking about it for a few more hours at least. Besides, Dick is still shaking slightly, little tremors rattling his skin against Nix’s. Nix can’t remember the last time he was warm. Nothing is as cold as Bastogne, but the skies haven’t been clear in weeks, and he feels like damp is becoming as insidious as the cold, working its way into everything, and if nothing else, Dick is warm.

“Just go to sleep, Dick,” Nix mumbles. It’s not a kiss if his whole face is pressed against Dick’s neck, nose and lips both.

Dick is about the most stubborn person Nix has ever met, but either he, too, misses exactly one thing about the Ardennes, or for once he’s too physically exhausted to fight. Either way, he stops arguing. He coughs into his covers again, but his trembling eases, and eventually he relaxes in Nix’s arms, breath deepening in slumber.


	8. SGAU

Dick’s fingers flex nervously on the arms of the chair, but he’d been told not to move. He can’t even sit up easily, thanks to the seat’s odd recline. It doesn’t seem to want to give him up — but that’s ridiculous, as if a chair can have any feelings one way or the other. 

He’s left staring awkwardly toward the ceiling while the crowd around him grows. Voices are rising, mostly talking about him, or calling more people into the spectacle that is apparently him sitting on a simple chair, and he’s starting to take back every nice thought he’s had about Antarctica. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sink as well as a colonel he doesn’t know join the fray, and the urge to jump back to his feet surges, even if they’re deep in conversation with a woman he also doesn’t know. 

“Major Winters.” One voice cuts through the chatter, a little rougher than the rest, and a scientist Dick has seen around the base — Nixon, he remembers — pushes his way through to Dick’s side, his fingers curving possessively on the arm of the chair. “Close your eyes. Picture where we are in the solar system." 

Dick thinks about asking why, but something in the man’s stubborn expression stops him, and besides, it’s finally an order other than  _don’t move_. He closes his eyes and settles his head back obediently. The chair is all hard edges and oddly gleaming material, like it’s part of the ice that surrounds them, but it’s comforting nonetheless, feels molded to him like a favorite chair. Dick doesn’t have a great memory for where the different asteroid belts lay or what the scale of things is supposed to be, but he calls up a child’s picture of the solar system, planets whirling around a yellow Sun, and focuses hard on the third body out, painting it in green and blue. The room falls silent.

Dick opens his eyes. There’s a hologram of a map sprawling across the ceiling over his head, more detailed than he could have drawn if he had a year, zooming in on a familiar blue marble with satellite accuracy. Dick catches his breath, only just refraining from asking aloud if he did that.

Sink snorts, and Dick jerks his gaze over. Sink looks almost pitying, but his voice is brisk. "Dick, I’m transferring you to the Atlantis expedition, effective immediately. Grab your bag and report in to Colonel Sobel." 

"Sir,” Dick says in surprise, and when Sink just looks at him, he swallows back his protest. “Yes, sir,” he manages, and Sink nods at him. Dick casts his eyes over to find the colonel, presumably Sobel, already glaring at him. He cuts his eyes away, and from the other side finds Nixon staring at him, eyes wide and hungry. When he catches Dick watching him back he doesn’t even flinch, only leans further in. 

“Have you ever heard of the Stargate program?” 


	9. Take you there

The train has just rumbled its way across the border into Illinois when Nix makes his way down the car and slides into the seat across from Dick. 

Dick glances over with a distracted half-smile, a brief quirk of his lips, but quickly resumes his people watching, a faint frown settling back onto his face.

Nix follows his gaze. There are men in uniform a few rows down, their conversation loud and carrying, a little more than is polite for the car of mixed company. It’s nothing too awful, just the usual kind of banter about girls and dances and things you miss during the war, but it’s turning some heads. Or maybe that’s just the uniforms, which are all the rage and usually mean a free drink or even meal if you just smile at the right person these days, and these boys aren’t hesitating to smile at every female face that turns their way. Dick doesn’t hold much with that kind of thing.

They’re sailors, though, not Army, and Dick knows as well as Nix that one of them saying anything will only make more trouble. And anyway neither he nor Dick dress the part anymore, and more to the point, they’re on vacation.

Nix slides his foot across the space between them, lets his knee fall open to knock against Dick’s. Dick stops his half-hearted glaring at the other passengers and raises an eyebrow at Nix. Nix doesn’t really have any reason for drawing Dick back to him. Dick wasn’t actually going to start a fight. But he feels like a kid around Dick sometimes, greedy and clamoring for attention. To Nix’s eternal delight, Dick rarely fails to indulge him, and eyes him now with a wry, expectant look. 

“What do you want to do first when we get there?” Nix asks.

Dick settles his shoulders back against the seat, facing Nix more squarely, though his leg stays pressed against Nix’s. It might be accidental. Even luxury train cars are hardly spacious. Nix knows better though, and he taps out a cigarette in satisfaction while Dick smirks at him a little. “I thought you were my tour guide.”

Nix widens his eyes. “Some tour guide who doesn’t take his guest’s wishes into consideration. But okay,“ he caves immediately, to the surprise of neither of them. “I’ll choose. I already got us booked at the Palmer House. Nicest rooms since we left Berchtesgaden.”

“But not including?”

Nix’s smile only broadens. “Well, I’ll let you make up your own mind. You’ll be quite the connoisseur of fine lodging by the time I’m through with you.” Dick rolls his eyes but he blushes faintly, too, and Nix takes a moment to light up his cigarette, savoring it.

“Tell you what what the Nazis didn’t have though,” he continues once he’s blown out the first breath of smoke, “is the original brownie." 

Dick plays along, his forehead wrinkling in a confused expression. "The original brownie?” he repeats, and Nix nods, pleased. 

“So the story goes. Mrs. Palmer wanted a dessert to show off for the World’s Fair in 1893. A cake, but not a cake. Her chef invented the brownie.”

“American ingenuity,” Dick marvels, deadpan, and Nix laughs, more at the smile twitching at the very corner of Dick’s mouth than anything else.

“And you know,” he rambles, anything to keep Dick watching him like that, because they’ll be pulling into the city before too long, and he’ll lose him to watching skyscrapers. “Lake Michigan isn’t quite Zellar See, but it’s not too shabby, either. I’ll take us sailing. You’re gonna love that. Nothing like seeing the city from the lake itself.”

“And that’s our first outing?” Dick asks. 

“Well, it’ll be the first real day.” Nix taps his cigarette on the heavy ashtray the train provides. “It’ll be pushing seven by the time we get in. I figure we’ll find our rooms, freshen up, have dinner at the hotel that first night. Get you one of those brownies. Call it an early night.” He keeps his voice light. “I’m looking forward to a full-sized bed after starting the trip off in a sleeper car.” He’s watching Dick like a hawk though, from his otherwise lazy sprawl, and he sees Dick purse his lips ever so slightly. It means,  _I know what you’re doing_ , and Nix swallows a grin. “What do you think?” he asks innocently. 

Dick folds his arms, settling into the challenge. “I don’t sleep well in hotels,” he lies. He’s a soldier, he can sleep in a ditch with artillery going off overhead, and Nix has personally watched him do so, for weeks on end, in fact. “You think this one has good enough walls that I won’t have to listen to the elevator going off all night?" 

"Walls so thick you couldn’t hear a parade going down the hall,” Nix promises, holding his hand up as if to stake an oath on it. 

Dick shrugs carelessly, but his eyes are crinkling with a smile that doesn’t reach his mouth. “An early night in sounds just fine.”

Nix grins and switches into the seat next to Dick, directing his gaze out the window as the train rolls them north around the lake and Chicago’s first towers scratch at the horizon. 


	10. One good night

Dick usually skips the card games. He has more patience than he ever did in college for sitting through his drunk friends’ antics, but that’s still not a lot. And he’s not big on gambling anyway. Dick uses these nights to catch up on his letter writing, which had grown increasingly erratic and neglected as Easy and the rest of the 101st’s initial rush of action slowed to a trudge, became weighted down more and more by the kinds of things Dick simply didn’t know how to explain to his parents, to his sister and DeEtta.

These days he can write about Germany and Austria, mountains and history. If they can’t understand the tension that comes with keeping an uneasy peace between German and American soldiers and thousands of DPs, at least he can bear to try to put it into words in a way he couldn’t explain Bastogne and Hagenau and Landsberg. And when the replies come back, worried about all the wrong things, Dick is starting to be able to shrug it off again.

The officers are housed together up and down the stately and echoing hallways of the old hotel, like the barracks but with so much opulence Dick hardly knows what to do with himself. He finds himself living in corners, unused to so much space to himself, and then puzzling over his own actions. He leaves his door open in the evenings, even if he doesn’t join the men, so he can enjoy the distant shouts of laughter and sometimes just plain shouting when Nix and Harry, Ron and Lip and whoever else is joining them play cards and fill the common room with noise and company. This part isn’t so hard to explain. He’s happy that his friends can relax. That even if it’s not exactly sanctioned, that they all feel comfortable kicking back.

The itch of boredom is starting to creep up on him the longer they relax in Austria. It isn’t that he enjoyed the war. But he can’t watch the newsreels and feel good about sopping up the sunshine by the lakeshore. The need to  _go_ is worrying at him, and maybe it’s been nibbling at his edges since the day he gave up Easy, but he’s never learned to be comfortable letting others onto the field in his stead. But neither can he grudge his friends the chance not to fight, not to put their lives on the line or throw any other men into the maw of the war. He may be restless, but he can’t be anything but grateful for their situation at the same time.

He’s trying to explain some of this to the Barnes family, who he sometimes feels easier writing to than his own parents when it comes to the war, when there’s a particularly loud burst of conversation down the hall, Nix and Harry’s voices vying for volume, and Lipton’s rare but welcome peal of laughter. Dick puts down his pen. He could close the door if he wanted to concentrate. But it’s exactly his impatience to move on that makes him feel like the war, the men out there enjoying each other’s company, will all be gone too soon.

He abandons his desk and makes his way down the hall but he hesitates in the doorway, watching the men clustered around the heavy oak table.  Nix and Harry are leaning in arguing about geography, as far as Dick can make out, something about mountain ranges and borders but mostly yelling. Lipton is watching their antics with a broad grin, while Ron stretches in his chair, a smaller smile playing over his face.

For a moment, none of them notice him. Then Nix glances past Harry and his face lights up in the unguarded way he only really has when he’s had a few more than usual. “Dick,” Nix exclaims happily, surging to his feet in excitement as if Dick’s presence is some kind of enormous surprise, instead of the default state of things.

Dick raises his eyebrows and enters the room, taking a seat on the arm of the couch. “Good game?”

The others hail him with varying degrees of enthusiasm, though none of them approach Nix’s levels. Nix throws himself down on the couch against Dick’s side, clapping a hand to his thigh in greeting. It’s a little familiar for Dick’s peace of mind, but he’s learned to trust the excuse of alcohol to cover suspicions, should any arise.

“You found us,” Nix beams at him, ignoring Dick’s question. Dick has to look away, pressing his lips together to avoid the answering smile that Nix induces. He shouldn’t find it charming. It’s the alcohol loosening Nix’s tongue, coloring his emotions. He meets Harry’s eyes instead, but Harry is also grinning fit to bust, and immediately starts in on Nix again.

“Game was fine until Nix decided we needed a lesson on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.”

“Is that so?” Dick glances down at Nix, who leverages himself off Dick’s leg – his hand sliding high enough that Dick tenses, and only partly because Nix is threatening to tumble Dick right off the couch arm with his weight – to better angle prop himself up. But he addresses, Dick, not Harry, his face close and earnest.

“I’m just trying to lend some civilization to this sorry group,” he promises, and Lip cracks up again, apparently seeing nothing amiss in this exchange. Dick, finding nothing to guard against, gives himself over to the general mood of the room. He unbends the line of his back, lets himself lean on Nix’s shoulder, and finds Nix nearly plastered to his side in immediate response. The others don’t even bat an eye.

In fairness, Harry has been known to fall into Dick’s bed with a total lack of propriety, and Dick has more than once roused the other men from places and beds not their own after particularly late nights. And that’s not even accounting for the nights the whole party migrates to his rooms thanks to Nix’s alcohol-fueled wanderlust, while only ever leads him to one place in the end.

Dick prefers the other nights. Nights when Nix waits patiently for the others to finish their game, their drinks and conversation, before he retreats to his own room and waits for the halls to go fully quiet. And some time after that, Dick’s door will ease open with barely a creak. He doesn’t think even Harry would be so blasé about those visits.

Or sometimes, Nix makes excuses for some business he “forgot” earlier in the day, and closes the two of them into Dick’s rooms, sealing out the war as it winds to a close. These days, it mostly takes the nights off, confining itself to business hours. And if that grates at Dick, knowing the war is still raging in the Pacific, then at least he has something to fill the time.  

They still have to be careful, but locks and heavy walls are blessings they haven’t had – well, ever. Dick finds himself reeling, sometimes, from the way Nix has grown into him with the speed and choking thickness of ivy, twining around his every limb. Two years is such a short time, and yet Dick doesn’t even know who he was before the war, before Nix. He can’t separate any of it anymore. He doesn’t know if it’s possible, and he worries that facing that question when the war is over is what drives him as much as the need to be useful. The war will be over soon enough, though Dick doesn’t know himself if he thinks that’s a blessing or merely foreboding.

Dick tells himself they’ve made it, because finally, he can think that without it feeling like a jinx. He tells himself that’s enough, because it is, because he thanks God for them both, for all of them that made it, every day. And for tonight, he lets himself relax against Nix’s side, listens to him banter with Harry, and soaks it all in. Real life is a consideration for tomorrow.


	11. “I wish I never met you.”

The words are sluggish with whiskey, like his breathing is heavy with effort, his arms molasses slow and clumsy. But they fall like stones, heavy and unmistakable, into the library’s thick quiet, buzzing faintly with the fire’s low hissing and the dull pump of his blood. The plush upholstery, the long curtains, the rich rugs — they all sop up his words without an echo, leaving Nix alone with his thoughts. He hates this room. 

Dick ignores his statement, as he ignores most of Nix’s drunken declarations and soliloquies. He heaves on Nix’s arm, trying to drag him to his feet. “Come on. You’ll feel better in the morning.” Nix thinks he could plot some grand mathematical model of Dick’s time in New Jersey by using only that sentence for data. He has always been annoyed, ever since Toccoa, with this particular duty he has only ever taken on himself. But there is some perfect dependence on time with how the inflection there has shifted from concern to exhaustion, and Nix knows that it is only a matter of time before Dick is tired enough to leave entirely. 

Nix wrenches his arm away, skinning his knuckles on the rug and crawling back toward the fireplace’s red glow, the bottle and glass that await him. “You don’t know shit about hangovers. And I mean it.” 

Dick doesn’t reach for him again and that tells Nix that his words penetrated this time. Even sloshed and half conscious, he can read Dick Winters like an open book. His face is shadowed but he stands awkwardly still, telling Nix everything he needs to know. 

“I was perfectly happy being unhappy here before I met you.” He slops another drink into his glass, but he can’t make his fingers let go of the bottle. It’s heavy and solid in a way even the floor isn’t right now. “You ruined everything.” 

Dick watches him for another minute and then sighs, easing himself down on the floor next to Nix slowly, like all of his joints have suddenly started to ache. “Have you ever thought about just plain being happy?” 

Nix thinks about riding a tank, grimy and triumphant and alive when others weren’t, about close foxholes and exploding trees and frostbitten fingertips, the dank huddle of two men who hadn’t showered in weeks. He closes his eyes on the library’s clean walls and expensive furniture, Dick’s clean face and decidedly unsoldierlike flannel and robe. “Not possible,” Nix snorts. 

“Have you tried?”

Nix turns and reaches out. In his graceless state it is almost a lunge, but he lands on target, hand fisted tightly in Dick’s shirtfront, lips pressed against Dick’s. It is only for a moment, less than a breath, until Dick’s hands are pushing him away, his face a mask of shocked confusion. “Nix, stop. That’s not funny.” 

Nix wipes his mouth, closing his eyes again. “That’s what I thought.” 


	12. Driving headcanon

“I’ll drive,” Dick offers as they walk out of the house, and reaches out casually to take the keys from Nix’s hand. 

Nix winces and pulls away before he can think better of it, and Dick’s eyebrows go up in surprise. He slows at the bottom of the steps.

“What?”

Nix pulls a face. “Nothing. Just. I got it.” 

Dick quirks a smile. “You know I’ll be the one driving home anyway.” He reaches out again, and Nix backs away, taking the keys with him. Dick takes a step forward, and Nix maneuvers to put the mailbox between them. Dick stops. “You always let me drive.”

“When I’m drunk,” Nix points out, and winces again, because that wasn’t the right argument, and now Dick is looking at him like the penny’s dropping, and he’s going to –

“Lew,” Dick says very slowly. “Do you not like me driving your car?” Nix hesitates far longer than he should, agonized, and Dick’s mouth flattens. He scoffs, very softly, in disbelief. 

“Okay,” Nix tries to placate him. “The Army Jeeps were one thing. They always rode like pieces of shit. This,” he gestures toward the driveway, “is a Cadillac, Dick. She  _cares_ when you don’t use the clutch.” The look on Dick’s face indicates that perhaps  _placating_  is not what Nix has achieved.

Dick’s jaw shifts. “I use the clutch,” he says evenly.

“You don’t,” Nix tells him, earnestly. “I mean, you clearly know it’s there, you’re doing something with it, but I’m not convinced you know what it’s for. Did you actually learn to drive on a farm?”

Dick taps his fingers on this thigh a few times, clearly choosing not to dignify Nix with a response. Nix closes his eyes in dismay. “Oh my God, you did.” 

Dick turns and walks stiffly toward the passenger seat. “Get in the car, Nix.”


	13. Superman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scenes from a AU I’m definitely not writing where Dick is Superman and Nix is Lois Lane.

Nix speaks over the rattle of his typewriter. “The heroic savior of our beloved city effortlessly saved 3 kittens from a tree on Saturday." 

Dick leans over his chair, expecting he’s being mocked. He is, but also Nix is actually typing what he says. Dick makes a face. "I was just passing by, that wasn’t really–" 

"When asked for comment, Superman replied charmingly that it was, ‘all part of a normal day.’ What would we do without this hero in our midst, this titan of moral and physical strength, this monolith of–" 

"For Pete’s sake, stop describing me.” Nix laughs around the cigarette in his mouth and continues typing.  Dick retreats around the desk, shaking his head. “I should never have told you." 

Nix looks at him pityingly, hands stilling over his typewriter. He taps his cigarette on the rim of his coffee mug, ashes drifting down to join the three butts already floating in the cold dredges of his cup. "That’s cute, you think I didn’t already know." 

Dick purses his lips. "Well maybe if you hadn’t needed rescuing a dozen times in six months." 

Nix’s eyes widen innocently. "I was tracking a story. I’m an investigative reporter, Dick. It’s a dangerous profession!" 

Dick eyes him skeptically. "And yet you’re the only one in our office I’ve had to rescue from Luthor no less than three times." 

Nix just laughs again, blowing a stream of smoke out of the side of his mouth. "My hero,” he smirks, and Dick shakes his head. Nix stretches his leg out, kicking him gently under the desk, and Dick cracks a smile. 


	14. Dog headcanon

Here’s the thing about the dog. Nixon clearly comes from both a super rich family who probably doesn’t even like housepets and also from a time before animal rescue was super popular. So I feel like he misses his dog, but clearly thinks the only way to fix that is to go buy some pure-bred dog from a fancy breeder, and he keeps putting it off.

And then one day this random mutt follows Dick home from church, and Dick brings it some water and then goes about his day. And Nix is all, “Hey. that’s a nice looking dog.”

And Dick, not even looking up from where he’s now reading the paper, just says, “Yeah, it’s a stray. If you feed it, it won’t leave.” And Nix doesn’t know if that’s a warning or a promise.

But he keeps looking at it out the window, until Dick is like, “Lew, are we taking in that dog?”

And Nix is all, “I mean, we don’t even know what it is. That’s a terrible idea.” But then he goes outside and ends up petting it for half an hour and when Dick comes outside Nix is like, “Hey, she knows ‘sit’ already. We’re working on 'stay.’”

Dick just leans on the porch and tells him, “Just make sure you give it a bath if it’s going to be an indoor pet.”

And Nix looks up in surprise. “Oh, you want to keep it?”

Dick just smiles at him and shakes his head, because clearly it’s Nix’s dog already. “You should think of a name,” Dick tells him.


	15. Dancing again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> User prompt: Hmmmm…I just thought one. I don’t know if it was the kind of prompt u were expecting, but…lets go: Nix calls Dick to go a party and realizes that he is in love with Dick when he sees the redhead dancing, laughing as he never did during the war and Dick can’t stop looking at Nix who is looking Dick above the glass of beer.

Oh my god, thank you! I totally love them out together, and I have definitely put some thought into how the two of them take to dancing.

Nix is a passable dancer, competent but graceless. Dancing is just an overture to his true goal when he goes out, and he’d rather find a quiet corner where his charm is better applied and he can keep a drink in his hand. He dragged Dick out tonight because he realized it’s been weeks since he spent a night out, and while the company at home is good, he can only look at the walls of his house for so long before going stir-crazy. Still, it’s possible his plans have backfired, because while he enjoys the music more than he’d anticipated, he’s lost his company. The girls have their choice of dance partners now that the war’s over, and Nix’s heavy-footed attempts aren’t gaining him many fans tonight.   
  
Dick, of course, carries his easy grace to the dance floor as with everywhere else in his life. He’s not short of partners but he takes it in stride, politely depositing each girl on the edge of the dance floor at the song’s close with a smile and some apology Nix can’t hear from his spot at the bar. When Nix had suggested going out, Dick had only shrugged and told him to have fun. It had taken no little effort on Nix’s part to make Dick part with his book and spot by the fireplace. Now that he’s here though, he appears to think it his due to dance with every girl who steps up at the end of a song, eyes bright and expectant. Dick, being a true gentleman, offers his hand and spins them out, one after another.   
  
It’s not all duty, though. His hands stay properly in place for the slow numbers, his hold respectable and chaste, but he appears to genuinely enjoy the faster beats. His current partner is already flushed when he takes her hand, hair falling from its pins in a few places from her previous exertions, and Dick indulges her and perhaps himself, spinning her faster as the tempo picks up, a rolling drumbeat Nix finds his own fingers tapping along to on the side of his glass. Dick moves lightly, his feet quick and sure, but it’s his smile, bright and easy, that catches Nix’s eye, and when he laughs, his whole face is transformed in a way that stops Nix’s breath.   
  
Nix had made it his goal, throughout the course of the war, to make Dick smile. He’d taken it on as a job, sometimes more seriously attended to than his real duties, because Dick was the only thing holding him up sometimes, holding any of them together, and keeping Dick in one piece, still able to smile, was worth any effort. He hadn’t realized how low his bar had fallen, though, how he had slowly come to accept the small, brittle upturn of his mouth, the crooked shape he returned to Nix almost reluctantly, in place of a real smile, the thing currently splitting his face in two. He looks like he did only in their best days at Toccoa, flushed with exertion but happy, competent and a century younger than Nix has come to know him.   
  
And Nix knows not to take it to heart. He knows it’s not this girl, this song, offering something Nix can’t. Or perhaps it is both of them, this post-war world that allows this whole night to exist, the fact that Dick’s current worry is only how to turn down this girl’s request for a second dance without causing offence.   
  
Nix didn’t know how starved he was for Dick’s happiness, but he watches Dick laugh, the sound lost under the brassy blare of a trumpet, and he wonders how he could have possibly misstaken the hunger suddenly gnawing at him for anything other than love. Dick spins around and catches Nix’s eye and Nix can’t look away, misses his chance to hide whatever emotion is currently storming across his face. But Dick just gazes back, expression softening but still warm, almost joyful, and it occurs to Nix that his own smiles must have become rarer as well, and he wonders if they’ve both been waiting for this, waiting to be whole people, before anything else could grow between them.   
  
The song changes, and Dick starts towards him. In the shifting of partners and flurry of people, they lose sight of one another, and when the crowd clears, Dick is once again partnered, swaying easily to a softer, slower piece of music. His eyes meet Nix’s ruefully over the girl’s head, and Nix raises his glass in a silent toast, face splitting in a grin that is for once genuine, free of any ironic twist. Dick is here, safe and happy. Nix has a drink and good music, and he knows he won’t be going home alone. They have the rest of their lives to figure out everything else.


	16. Physiotherapist Nix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> User prompt: OMG, I HAD AN IDEA physiotherapist!nix and orthopedist!dick, dick is always sending patients to nix and likes to see nix when he does, but he tries to avoid him because he likes too much the other as well as he thinks he shouldnt get in a relationship with his colleague but ends up in nix's table? 8D // I like the paramedic idea, but I already wrote about it once .

1\. “Jesus, Dick, don’t you have anyone else on your referral list?” Nix leans in Dick’s open office doorway, a grin belying his cranky tone.

Dick looks up from a stack of paperwork in surprise, setting aside the sandwich that serves as his mid-afternoon lunch. “How’d you get back here?“ 

Nix waves him away. "Your secretary let me back. That’s the third patient this week. You got some kind of a crush on me?" 

Dick looks down, flipping his sheets of paper blindly, feeling the hot blush rising on his cheeks. "You’re a good therapist, Nix. And she’s not a secretary.”

“Yeah,” Nix answers, and Dick keeps his head down, avoids the smirk he hears in Nix’s voice. “Well. Thanks.”

2\. Nix ushers Dick back to his office. “I can’t stay,” Dick starts, needing a boundary for himself. Nix shrugs, pushing the door shut behind them and sprawling in his desk chair. 

“So make it quick.” He leers a little. “I don’t mind.”

Dick finds himself sitting opposite Nix, despite his intentions. “I just wanted to see how you were making out.”

“With all your patients coming in? I’m busy. But good. You want to hear about it? We can talk over dinner." 

Dick stands again. Nix is gorgeous and too charming for his own good, and Dick wasn’t going to do this at work. "No. I’m – busy. I can’t.” He forces a smile. “Sorry.”

3\. “What do you mean, you were in a car accident?” Nix demands, voice oddly damped over the phone line, despite his volume. “When were you going to tell me?”

“You figured it out,” Dick points out irritably, shifting uncomfortably on the bed. Nothing is comfortable after two days here. Dick has always thought of himself as a sympathetic doctor, but he’s quickly stocking up on empathy. 

Nix swears at him, and Dick winces. “Can you not, just now?” The pain meds leave him faintly nauseous all the time, and the loud voice isn’t helping anything. 

Nix quiets. “I’m coming over,” he announces. “Can I bring you anything?”

Dick sighs. “The ice cream here is terrible,” he sulks, and he hears Nix’s smile over the line. 

“On my way.”

4\. Nix lets himself into Dick’s house, calling a hello, and walks straight to the kitchen, dropping off a pint of Americone Dream in the freezer. Yesterday it was Cherry Garcia, and Phish Food the day before that. Nix likes to keep it interesting, and Dick likes everything.

“I made an appointment for you for Monday,” he says when he finds Dick on the couch folding laundry, left leg stretched out and propped up in front of him on a stack of pillows. “Please tell me you didn’t drag that basket around yourself." 

"Harry was here earlier.” Dick lays some clean socks on top of the pile. “He helped out with some things. Thank you. You didn’t need to come over. Who am I seeing?”

“Yours truly,” Nix brags, and scoffs. “As if I’d let you into anyone else’s hands.”  
Dick bites his lip. 

5\. Nix eases Dick’s leg onto the table, fingers splayed along his calf, carefully bracketing the angry, raised red line still healing around his knee. For a few minutes he’s too focused on the wound to pay any attention to Dick’s face, and Dick breathes slowly, trying to relax. It’s an impossible task with Nix’s touch ghosting along his leg, the shock of Nix’s dark hair close enough that if Dick just reached out… he knots his hands in his lap instead. 

Eventually, Nix looks up. Absorbed in his work, his voice is low, softer than normal. “Tell me,” he says, watching Dick’s face carefully, and straightens his leg. Nix has one hand cupped around Dick’s foot, guiding him down, the other braced against his thigh. Dick presses his lips together. 

Nix stops. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Dick closes his eyes. It’s excruciating, but not painful. 

“Dick.” Dick opens his eyes. Nix’s eyebrows are drawn together, worried. “If it’s hurting you –”

“It’s not,” Dick assures him. His leg hasn’t really stopped hurting, but that has nothing to do with Nix’s gentle hands. “It’s –” Nix starts to back away, and Dick reaches out. He doesn’t know what he intends. To stop him from leaving, he supposes, except that he finds himself pulling Nix closer in, all the way, pressing their lips together. After a sharp intake of breath, Nix kisses him back. 


End file.
